Current mood:

Flattened

Putting this here, because it's not funny, and he's a fandom all his own
Terry Pratchett starts proceedings to end his life

Three and a half years ago, Terry Pratchett, the beloved author of the Discworld series, announced that he has early-onset Alzheimer's disease. Now he's made an even more startling announcement.

Pratchett, who has campaigned in his native United Kingdom for the right of assisted suicide, has begun the formal process of assisted suicide in Switzerland, one of the few countries in the world to legalize euthanasia. Specifically, this would take place at Dignitas, a clinic that provides qualified doctors and nurses to assist with the patients' suicides.

Dignitas has sent Pratchett the paperwork he needs to sign to begin the assisted suicide process—but he has yet to sign it.

According to The Guardian,

"The only thing stopping me [signing them] is that I have made this film and I have a bloody book to finish," he said during a question-and-answer session following a screening at the Sheffield documentary festival Doc/Fest.

He said that he decided to start the process after making the film Terry Pratchett: Choosing to Die, which shows the moment of death of a motor neurone sufferer, millionaire hotel owner Peter Smedley.

Terry Pratchett: Choosing to Die airs tonight in the United Kingdom, which means the end could be nigh for our literary hero. But the The Guardian wrote that "According to Dignitas, 70% of people who sign the forms do not go through with taking their own lives."

We wish Pratchett the best, no matter what his decision is.

Sir, whatever you choose, I hope it is as you choose and with the dignity you have shown in your life.

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chibikaijuu
2011-06-18 09:40 pm UTC (link)

I'm saddened to see this, but I don't blame him at all. He has a degenerative disorder that means that he might later not be able to sign the paperwork. It doesn't mean that he's going to go through with it now, just that he will be able to, if that's still what he wishes, to later take advantage of their services while he still has most of his mind.

Like I said above, my paternal grandfather has Alzheimer's and his father (and maybe his mother?) died of it, and I believe so did his brother. It's stressful and awful for everyone involved, and even in places where assisted suicide is legal, once the patient is past the point where they can no longer legally make their own decisions, "Death With Dignity" is off the table.

My maternal grandfather was a member of the Hemlock Society (I don't know about my grandmother). He did not die in a state with legal physician-assisted suicide, but he ended up being fairly lucky - he lived into his 80s, and when he got cancer, once it started actually making him sick it progressed quite rapidly, and he wasn't in pain (or on so many painkillers that he was completely out of it) for very long (I think it took about six months in total from "feeling pretty good for an 82-year-old man with two replacement hips, who narrowly escaped the Holocaust, had lost his wife seven years prior, and a daughter fifteen years prior" to "dead", and he was always very well-prepared, and my mother was sole heir, so there wasn't a big fuss dealing with legal and financial affairs). Along the same line, both of my parents have told me, now that I'm an adult, that if it comes down to my decision, they want the plug pulled. I have been raised in an atmosphere that agrees strongly with Pterry - you have the right to die with dignity, to say your goodbyes and not be kept alive once you are terminally ill and in pain and incapable of experiencing your life (which doesn't mean, oh, I've been diagnosed with a degenerative disorder, kill me now", or "I've had a stroke and life is very hard, kill me now" - one of my great-grandmothers had a severe stroke shortly before I was born, and didn't live long after, but was still fully there - I was the first grandchild from her daughter's line, and when my father brought me in to see her, her eyes widened and her whole face lit up, even though she could no longer speak - I don't think she wanted to miss that, even though she was paralyzed and unlikely to live longer, and I wouldn't have wanted it taken from her for the world.)

Sorry about the TL;DR - stuff like this has been on my mind a lot lately.

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